A SKEPITCAL LOOK
AT FAMOUS
OCCULTISTS by
The Notorious Doctor Zoom Zoom

"COUNT" CLAUDE LOUIS SAINT GERMAIN (1710?-1784)

He seems to be a favorite of occultists nowadays. The Rosicrucians and
Theosophists claim that Saint Germain is still alive and that he was
once known as Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626)! H.P. Blavatsky claims the
Count to be one of the “ascended masters” that lives inside a mountain
in Tibet, apparently even in the present time. Her successor Annie
Besant claimed she actually met the Count still alive in 1896.
Her follower Henry Olcott claimed he met centuries old Count St.
Germain in 1926, still alive and said to be living in a castle in
Transylvania. Guy Ballard, founder of the "I AM" New Age cult, claimed
he too met Saint Germain, but on Mount Shasta in California in August
of 1930. He must have must have gotten tired of having Dracula as a
neighbor and moved out of his castle. Elizabeth Claire Prophet
claimed to receive regular revelations from him, and her cult has
practically deified the Count. Prophet claims the Count magically
appeared to the founding fathers at the signing of the Declaration of
Independence in 1776, telling them to sign it (as though they wouldn’t
have otherwise?). Other occultists claim he lived on from the
1700's and became known as the psychologist Carl Jung. Obviously
all these stories can’t be true (in fact, none of them are), and
the actual truth is much less fanciful.

The
real “Count” St. Germain spun quite an unbelievable yarn of being
extremely old...anywhere from 300 to 2000 years old, depending on whom
he wanted to impress. He spoke of ancient events as though he had been
present at them, and this apparently fooled some people into thinking
he actually had. It’s a secret many occultists use called lying. He
made it a point never to eat in public, and this added to the image
that he had somehow discovered the secret of eternal youth and no
longer needed food to survive. He did eat in private, or else he would
have starved to death.

No one knows
where exactly “Count” St. Germain came from, and it’s unlikely he was
actually a Count. Sometimes he claimed he was a Russian Prince, a count
from Transylvania, or a German nobleman. In 1774 he fooled the Margrave
Charles Alexander into believing he was Prince Rakoczy, until Alexander
eventually learned several months later that all the Rakoczys were all
dead. One account says he was simply the Italian son of a tax
collector born in 1710 in San Germano (Itallian for Saint Germain), and
most historians think this is correct. Nothing of his life is
known before 1740.

St. Germain was said
to have owned an impressive art collection, but famous pieces of art
have pedigrees, and there is no famous painting ever documented to have
been owned by Count St. Germain. Not even one. Since Germain was said
to have been an artist himself, this suggests his paintings were really
forgeries. Count St. Germaine managed to gain the confidence of Louis
XV of France.

Not everyone was fooled
by St. Germain. Once he tried to impress the famous Giacomo Casanova
(who was also a fake, but later at least he eventually admitted it in
his memoirs) by changing a small ingot of lead into gold. But since he
was a “fellow traveler”, Casanova told St. Germain he knew the trick
was accomplished- -by switching the lead ingot for a gold one through
slight of hand. St. Germain was miffed, and politely asked him to
leave his house. Concerning the Count, Casanova had this to say:

“This
extraordinary man, intended by nature to be the king of impostors and
quacks, would say in an easy, assured manner that he was three hundred
years old, that he knew the secret of the Universal Medicine, that he
possessed a mastery over nature, that he could melt diamonds,
professing himself capable of forming, out of ten or twelve small
diamonds, one large one of the finest water without any loss of weight.
All this, he said, was a mere trifle to him. Notwithstanding his
boasting, his bare-faced lies, and his manifold eccentricities, I
cannot say I thought him offensive. In spite of my knowledge of what he
was and in spite of my own feelings, I thought him an astonishing man
as he was always astonishing me.”

Another account from a contemporary comes from a letter written in 1745
by Horace Walpole The letter states Count St. Germain was arrested in
London on suspicion of espionage but released without charge:

“ ...the other day they seized an odd man, who goes by the name of
Count St. Germain. He has been here these two years, and will not tell
who he is, or whence, but professes that he does not go by his right
name. He sings, plays on the violin wonderfully, composes, is mad, and
not very sensible. He is called an Italian, a Spaniard, a Pole; a
somebody that married an heiress with a great fortune in Mexico,
and ran away with her jewels to Constantinople; a priest, a fiddler, a
vast nobleman. The Prince of Wales has had unsatiated curiosity about
him, but in vain. However, nothing has been made out against him; he is
released; and, what convinces me that he is not a gentleman, stays
here, and talks of his being taken up for a spy.” (From a Letter to Sir
Horace Mann, Dec. 9, 1745, available on Project Gutenberg at
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/12073/12073.txt)

Cassanova’s writings give a clue as to why the Count got away with his
ruse for so long; St. Germain was a charismatic character. Some people
probably thought him an entertaining and harmless quack. But no
doubt there were some people who probably believed him, or else he
couldn’t have made a successful living sponging off of rich nobles.

The mystery of his identity seemed to be part of his charm. His very
last meal ticket had him quartered in a particularly damp room, which
is said to have lead to his rheumatism. He became depressed toward the
end of his life. During his lifetime, it’s said he also met another
occult quack, Count Cagliostro, who he claimed he initiated into
Freemasonry in London...even though the Prussian grand master Freemason
St. Germain once met spotted him as a fake when he couldn’t give the
correct handshakes and passwords.

In
reality, Count St. Germain wasn’t really a count, didn’t have occult
powers, and was just a con artist. Count St. Germain was probably 74
when he died in 1784...even though he claimed to be centuries old and
knew the secret to eternal life! He was just a con man, nothing more,
certainly was not an “ascended master”!

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